Thank you for writing up Stanislav Petrov.
He was one of those real heroes you never ever hear about. Except that we all owe our lives and our civilization to their hard common sense.
You and I may be replaceable. But if we ever fall off the horse that is technical civilization, we will never ever be able to get back upon it again. It is NOT replaceable.
The first time I heard about him was only a couple of years ago. He ought to be in all the schoolbooks. We need examples like that.
Sometimes hope is all we have regarding the use of nuclear weaponry - that they're all stored safely and securely, that the chain of custody is assured, and that our leaders are responsible enough to know that using them Should Not Be Done.
Yes, a hero. I understand there were
at least several similar incidents during the cold war. I was told that during the Cuban Missile crisis, the nuclear bombers were dispersed to airfields all over the country, including one in Michigan or was it Wisconsin.
Anyway, some very nervous guards hears what sounds like people trying to break through the base perimiter, the guards call in saying that sabateurs are trying to break in. Should that happen the standing orders are for the bombers to take off which they do.
Some level headed officer decides to check and finds that the ruckus is caused by some bears who are probably attracted to the garbage bins. The flights were halted by someone actually driving on the airfield and blocking the planes from taking off. This had to be done because supposingly, the pilots are ordered not to listen to follow orders from the ground once they take flight.
Just think nerves and hungry bears almost started WWIII.
There seems to be an awful lot of important history that's left out of history textbooks. Petrov should be in them, Prescott Bush should be in them, Smedley Butler should be in them. I have no idea why they get left out...
"Don't do something! Stand there and think!"
Quite the opposite of conventional wisdom, but it is at the core of the "ounce of prevention ..." adage.
Once, I thought that not only I but my entire civilization would die before my 30th birthday.
I turned 44 this past May.
I probably do NOT want to know how many times I came close to being correct.
Lt. Col. Petrov and the USAF officer who identified the problem as bears deserve monuments.
And again, h/t LM, I REALLY hope the GOP elders have a "Bat-Plan" prepared, and that they will USE IT before Darth Cheney and the Chimperor nuke Iran just because they think it'd be fun.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker bush is a assembly of god style dominioist...he wants to bring about the endof the world....we are in a lot of trouble unless there is something in the works to stop him
I'm surprised the Soviet system would give him the power to launch a counterstrike without the approval of his superiors. But then again Ronnie Reagan ended the Cold War and all that with tough talk.
I'm beginning to realize that with the end of the Cold War the US and its system of worldwide security agreements and political meddling were just as obsolete as the Soviet model. Instead of creating a vast new world security arrangement our benevolent leaders starting under the elder Bush and the Clinton and now Bush Jr. have sought to expand the US security apparatus to envelop the entire world. The Cold War No Man's land and buffer zones are being gobbled up by war, corruption and tyranny.
The only popular foreign policy at the present is to forever dominate the world militarily and economically. This will lead to a lot more destruction.
I'm surprised the Soviet system would give him the power to launch a counterstrike without the approval of his superiors.
Wengler --
He didn't have authority -- just as our people in the Hole in Colorado or up in Looking Glass (when it's flying) -- don't have authority to sole commit a counterstrike, absent a number of very specific things happening, none of which had happened that day in Russia. No one in any system owns their birds without positive authorization from National Command Authority via their PAL or PAL equivalent. Both the Russian system and ours (as well as the French, British, Chinese, Israeli, and even the Indian and Pakistani systems) are all designed to Fail SAFE with many many layers of Command & Control to do just that one thing -- make certain no one person can ever commit a launch without authorization from NCA.
Yes, there are exceptions such as when we're at DEFCON 1 and the Hole gets cut off by an actual attack. Then, after a certain amount of time, the Commanding General surviving in charge of our Strategic Forces "owns" our birds, either from down in the Hole or up in Looking Glass. But that's by design, to make certain Mutual Assured Destruction applies -- that no nation can ever stop an assured retaliatory attack simply by cutting off our head with a pop-up strike on DC from just over the horizon with a 5-10 minute inbound time. Or a bomb smuggled into DC so there literally is NO warning time; say, pull the trigger during the State of the Union from half a mile away and you have a classic decapitation attack.
That isn't what happened here.
Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov reported the alarm up the chain of command as he was required to do. But he reported it up as a FALSE ALARM, not as a missile launch. Which forced everyone in the Chain to stop and think, rather than simply blow the world apart.
He could have been over-ridden by Russian NCA. But that would have meant someone not in the Hole deciding something being reported as a False Alarm wasn't. Not likely.
At least, not likely back in the days when there weren't entire sections being set up to stove-pipe highly selected raw data taken out of context and without proper analysis, straight up to the President of the United States in order to support the political beliefs of the Vice President.
Thanks Jesse.
I wrote about it a couple of years ago, and there was some interesting conversation in a friend's blog about what it was like to be a teen back then; how it shaped us.
But Col. Petrov deserves a little more recognition.
Uh, Mr. Baker, sir, isn't it time to activate the Bat-Plan?
You DO have one, right? RIGHT?
Yea Stan!!!
Jesse Wendel,
OK got it. It is interesting to contrast this with the KLA incident and the failures of Soviet command in that incident compared to this one. Maybe that event had a perceptible effect on how to approach unknown objects in Soviet airspace.
I just have to keep hoping -- boy, that's a word I really hate using when it comes to nuclear weapons, carrier groups, and Armies -- that the Joint Chiefs and their immediate subordinates haven't lost sight of how much sense it sometimes makes to...
Just. Do. Nothing.
Petrov loved his country. He might even love humanity.
Our leadership's members have no such loves.
Why, again, would they do nothing?
Incompetence.
I am betting my survival, and the survival of humanity, ultimately, on the incompetence of this country's leaders, and the future incompetence of the Western world.
It's hard to do evil when you suck at doing anything at all.
Peversely, I think I'm more realistic and upbeat than good Doctor Wendel.
After all, plenty of gambles are lost relying on the goodness of men, but few gamesmen go bankrupt betting on the failures of men.
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